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HIV/AIDS, what’s wrong with
gratitude?
E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Ghanadot.com
Priorities in Africa sometimes tend to be ambivalent, to put it
mildly. And the effort to combat the dreadful HIV/AIDS is no
exception to this rule.
Last Friday, November 30, 2007 was a day devoted to the
recognition that HIV/AIDS is still out there. For those of us in
Africa, this carries a special message since almost two third
of the HIV/AIDS victims are to be found in Africa.
That said,
however, we should note that a lot is being done, but very
little gratitude is being expressed for some of the combatants
in the war against this dreadful disease.
The fight against HIV/AIDS is being done by many, but one will
be remiss if one does not point out that the United States, as a
single nation, under the current administration of Bush, has
done more than any other.
I will pause here to give room for those who would wish to call
me Uncle Tom to do so now because I am certain that as daylight
follows darkness, there is someone out there who will do so
before this paragraph is completed.
I know it is not trendy to praise America and especially the
Bush administration these days. Somehow, it is alright to
fraternize with the Mugabes of Zimbabwe and the Omar Hasan Ahmad
al-Bashirs of Sudan. But point out a generosity by Bush, for
Africa, that reaches sky-high and you will have your own cousins
crying foul – America the imperialist!
Of course, America is an imperialist nation and so is China, but
the help here is real and it should be gratifying.
“In 2003, with bipartisan Congressional support,” says
Ambassador Mark R. Dybul, US Global AIDS Coordinator , President
Bush announced his five year "$18 billion Emergency Plan with
the aim to provide a “comprehensive approach to combating
HIV/AIDS around the world.”
When this program was first announced, some skeptics had doubts
about its implementation and wondered whether this huge sum of
money would ever find it way into the US Congressional budget to
benefit 15 severely stricken HIV/AIDS foreign countries, twelve
of which are to be found in Africa.
Funding is now no longer the issue because by 2008, according to
Ambassador Dybul, $18.3 billion would have been spent in this
Emergency Plan, “ the largest commitment ever by a single nation
toward an international public health initiative.”
The same Bush administration on May 30, 2007 has proposed,
additionally, the expenditure of some $30 billion, almost
twice the amount staked out in the 2003 budget, in the next one
for the following five years to help fight HIV/AIDS globally.
It shouldn’t take much thinking to know where the bulk of this
amount will go; that Africa, a continent that needs this money
most, would receive the lion share. But is anybody out there
applauding?
Through the Emergency Plan proposed by the Bush administration
in 2003, the U.S. Government has helped to support an integrated
regime of prevention, treatment, and care programs in
partnerships with others worldwide.
According to Ambassador Dybul, this Emergency Plan, called
PEPFAR, is working. In just three years, he says, PEPFAR, among
other achievements, has supported “prevention of mother-to-child
HIV transmission services for women during more than 10 million
pregnancies; antiretroviral prophylaxis for women during 800,000
pregnancies; prevention of an estimated 152,000 infant
infections; care for nearly 6.7 million, including care for more
than 2.7 million orphans and vulnerable children; and over 30
million counseling and testing sessions for men, women and
children.”
While the purpose of World AIDS Day provides an opportunity to
focus on the devastation that HIV/AIDS is causing to lives
worldwide, it would be worthy to use this day to note and
applaud the gigantic efforts of the current US administration
and others who are helping.
No other US administration has cared so much about Africa in the
public health arena than this one. To put things in perspective,
one should be reminded of the following:
By January 2000, according to a CNN report, the Clinton
administration had set its sight on HIV/AIDS as a security
threat and had doubled its budget request to $254 million
to fight the disease overseas .
Vice President Al Gore was at the UN immediately after saying
"The heart of the security agenda is protecting lives -- and we
now know that the number of people who will die of AIDS in the
first decade of the 21st Century will rival the number that died
in all the wars in all the decades of the 20th century."
The Clinton administration ended the appeal to fight by asking
Congress for “$100 million for AIDS prevention, care, public
health infrastructure and education in the African and Asian
countries hardest hit by the AIDS epidemic,” according to CNN.
Bush senior and the Reagan administrations provided even less
while AIDS as a public health hazard was not yet worth a thought
under the Carter regime.
Today, and within some three years, the US budget to help fight
AIDS globally has grown from Clinton’s mere $254 million to some
$18.3 billion. Accordingly, some 33 million people, 22 million
of whom are in Africa, are to a larger degree receiving help
thanks to the generosity of this program.
It is worthy to commend all nations that are making the
financial sacrifice in this global war but it will be prudent to
single out the US and the Bush administration for its gigantic
efforts against HIV/AIDS.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a speech this Friday that
a renewed effort is needed in the fight against HIV/AIDS and
that this should “focus on helping women, who now make up half
of those living with AIDS worldwide.”
Perhaps for those of us in Africa with little money, the first
step for refocus should begin with gratitude. It didn’t cost
this writer a nickel to express his own.
E. Ablorh-Odjidja,Publsiher www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC,
December 2, 2007
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